Low Budget Gaming PC

Necromonger · January 7, 2017

Not too long ago I built 2 relatively high end PCs; Both Core i5s with a GTX 1080 & GTX 1070. One for me and one for my girlfriend.

Now I love to game and so does my girlfriend. Naturally my family and friends have taken notice of it and are curious. One little curious person is my niece. She always wants to stay over to play with me and my girlfriend and seeing as she's my only niece from my only sister, I kind of wanted to throw something special for her.

She's a third grader. Her only other gaming consoles are her Wii U, Nintendo 2DS and a tablet. I don't have any of those consoles and therefore cannot join her and play with her. That being said, she is a fast learner and recently started playing with a keyboard and mouse on my Asus laptop.

My budget for her build is $400. Here are my options.

I have an old Dell Inspiron 537s, with an Intel Core 2 E5200(LGA 775), 4GB DDR2 RAM, and a stock 300W PSU.

I also have an old R9 270X and a spare ATX case from my old gaming PC.

I could go with upgrading the Inspiron to:

Intel Core 2 Quad QX9650 - $50 (eBay)

GTX 1050 ti - $150

400W PSU - $30

250GB SSD + 1 TB HDD - $120

Windows 10 - $20

Budget = $370

Or I could build off the old GPU and case:

Intel Core i3 6100 - $119

H170 Mobo - $60

R9 270X - $0.00

500W PSU - $50

250GB SSD + 1 TB HDD - $120

Windows 10 - $20

Budget = $370

EPPHO · January 7, 2017

Go with i3 build if you are in a hurry. If you are not,wait for new kaby lake pentium CPUs. They will be way under 100$ and will have 2 cores 4 threads which is same as i3 6100 but with lower price and slightly lower frequency which won't make any difference in gaming.

Prömetheus · January 7, 2017

the second build is a better build

Necromonger · January 9, 2017

Update: 01/09/16

So, I'm in no hurry to build this PC but have looked around for other alternatives. Tofay I found a used Dell Optiplex 9010 SFF near me for around $250. I'm going to go see it in a bit, but it's spec's with:

i7 3770

640GB HDD

Windows 10 Home 64-bit

8GB DDR3 RAM

I think it's one of those hyperthreaded CPUs (4 physical cores, 8 logical cores).

All I really care about is the CPU and RAM. I'll most likely add SSD to speed up boot time, but would this be a better option? Assuming the used Dell is legit.